The most recent Goldman, Sachs & Co.,Nielsen NetRatings and Harris Holiday eSpending Report online holiday purchases (excluding travel) exceeded $30 billion in 2005. This represents an increase of 30% over 2004.

Category growth:

apparel/clothing - + 42%
computer hardware/peripherals: +126%
Consumer electronics: +109%
Books category jumped: +66%

Toys/video games fell 9% over last year. The report states that one of the contributing factors to the poor perfomance of this category was the lack of “hot” new products.

Other key findings mentioned in the report include a 3% increase in the number of consumers who stated that they were very satisfied with their online shopping experience. Only 6% of those surveyed stated they were either very dissatisfied or somewhat dissatisfied.

It certainly seems that people are leaving holiday shopping until later in the season. In a previous eSpending report, it was stated that only 37 percent of shoppers has finished gift buying by December 9. By December 16, 54% percent of online shoppers had completed gift buying activities, but 10% of those surveyed still hadn’t commenced purchasing gifts.

Read more of the Holiday eSpending Report

Learn more about minimizing shopping cart abandonment